Hi all! I have a young/green horse who is nervous about being touched anywhere but his face. He will allow it, but not without some dancing around and consternation. Any tips to help with this besides just practice, practice, practice?
- He might be ticklish, and you have to find the right brush that he can tolerate.
- Any chance he has Lyme disease? I’m pretty sure that can make them very sensitive to physical stimuli.
- Go slow, don’t overwhelm. Counterintuitively, he might want more pressure, as maybe light pressure is too tickly. Maybe he prefers deep, almost massage-like pressure. Might want to experiment.
- Might look into T-touch and/or Masterson Method to see if he can settle with one of those modalities.
Good luck!
It depends if he really has a sensory issue, where even the slightest touch is painful, or if he is not used to being touched and so jumpy about it and can be desensitized thru training.
Practically all colts we started that were not handled were touchy until they understood what touch meant.
Weather permitting, we used baths to help them understand, “flooding” their touch sense gently with a soft water stream, just be careful the horse doesn’t feel attacked by the water and becomes alarmed and more worried.
Worked especially well when they were tired and hot, as quickly they felt pleasure from it.
Any you use, water also, needs to be done being sure you don’t overwhelm the horse, do more than they really can understand and make them more alert and jumpy, which is not a place to learn from.
We did have the rare horse that was so skin sensitive, a normal daily grooming was painful to them, much less the happy, vigorous, several times a day grooming most race horses receive.
As a trainer you had to warn a groom with such horse to let the horse be and ease on the grooming, if they had not done so on their own as the horse became more resistant and body sore.
Your horse being young and green, I expect he is maybe not over the top sensitive as much as maybe not yet educated to being groomed.
Determining that would be a good first step.
I second the bathing route. They get the feeling of touching all over. Not any pressure like brushes might cause. Even just wetting and scraping him off, often, should help decrease sensitivity. I would try daily if your temps allow it.
A secondary idea could be blanketing him, perhaps in his stall with just a sheet. Somethinge you don’t care if it gets some damage. Along with that just being covered, lunging or round penning while wearing the blanket is also helpful in learning to ignore the weird feelings blanket causes on his body moving thru the various gaits.
Do be careful of horse kicking out HARD as he gets “tickled” by the water or his covers.
Warwick Schiller. He’s got a series under his subscription on a horse who has a a fear of people. Even if this horse isn’t anxious about people there’s great content and examples about ways to approach and retreat with the timing to create confidence.
